With our, soon 60 year old boat, that's surprising in my experience.
We've been sitting on a mooring in NE Harbor for 4 days and haven't needed to run the engine. We did have to power over to the Asticou dock and fill the water tanks (best kep secret in NEH).
Still I noticed the house battery was only calling for a small charge load from the alternator. Our 2 GRP 27 are still happy and they are showing their age this year.
Mobo's in this harbor all rely on their main engine or generator for charging, daily. One even runs a noisy Honda though it's a medium sized trawler and likely has a generator. These boats can only go a few hours without power generation.
I'm amazed at how many sailboats need to run their main engine during the day. Most have some solar and even a few wind generators, but these don't appear to be keeping up with many sailboats.
Refrigeration is the culprit. I see some owners come aboard, check their meters and quickly dash to the ignition. I know what their meters are telling them.
We're not bothered in places like NEH, power generation is a fact of life when many transient boats are packed into a popular harbor.
We're enjoying a new era of energy conservation on Xmas. LED lights have really shaved down our power needs. And smaller devices running nav. software (phones, tablets) have made several days no problem for our small battery bank.
However another benefit may be the reason I haven't had a thing to fix on our simple boat until a reading light didn't come on. What a treat to pull out a meter and do some trouble shooting. Turns out we have a flukey STDP switch. I have a spare but just fiddling around, 'fixed' it for now.
We're sitting out a good storm that dumped tons of rain on the coast. The sky is clearing from the direction it came. We leave tomorrow after grabbing some groceries and 4 more blocks of ice.
We've been sitting on a mooring in NE Harbor for 4 days and haven't needed to run the engine. We did have to power over to the Asticou dock and fill the water tanks (best kep secret in NEH).
Still I noticed the house battery was only calling for a small charge load from the alternator. Our 2 GRP 27 are still happy and they are showing their age this year.
Mobo's in this harbor all rely on their main engine or generator for charging, daily. One even runs a noisy Honda though it's a medium sized trawler and likely has a generator. These boats can only go a few hours without power generation.
I'm amazed at how many sailboats need to run their main engine during the day. Most have some solar and even a few wind generators, but these don't appear to be keeping up with many sailboats.
Refrigeration is the culprit. I see some owners come aboard, check their meters and quickly dash to the ignition. I know what their meters are telling them.
We're not bothered in places like NEH, power generation is a fact of life when many transient boats are packed into a popular harbor.
We're enjoying a new era of energy conservation on Xmas. LED lights have really shaved down our power needs. And smaller devices running nav. software (phones, tablets) have made several days no problem for our small battery bank.
However another benefit may be the reason I haven't had a thing to fix on our simple boat until a reading light didn't come on. What a treat to pull out a meter and do some trouble shooting. Turns out we have a flukey STDP switch. I have a spare but just fiddling around, 'fixed' it for now.
We're sitting out a good storm that dumped tons of rain on the coast. The sky is clearing from the direction it came. We leave tomorrow after grabbing some groceries and 4 more blocks of ice.